


Meditation

by wishonadarkstar



Series: Vader & Leia Master/Apprentice Series [2]
Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-03
Updated: 2018-08-03
Packaged: 2019-06-21 10:57:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15556206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wishonadarkstar/pseuds/wishonadarkstar
Summary: Leia finally concedes and lets Vader begin her training.





	Meditation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AceQueenKing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceQueenKing/gifts).



It had taken days to convince Leia to sit with him with her eyes closed, but Vader supposed that that level of paranoia was only understandable, given the way this had started. Still, when she finally conceded to curl on the floor across from him, her limbs coiled and bent with an ease that made the mechanical servos that constituted his own joints ache with phantom pain.

He watched the way she watched him, wariness in her posture and in all the other small details. He had had only over-sized black robes to offer her to wear, but offer them he had, and still she wore her white dress, rather the worse for wear after the week she’d endured. Her eyes were dark and dull with fatigue, because she’d refused to do anything in the room but pace and occasionally yell at him.

He still wasn’t certain why he was tolerating such disrespect, except that whenever she stopped to yell at him, her eyes snapped with familiar sparks, and he found it hard to meditate when she was angry with him instead of the galaxy at large.

“Close your eyes,” he told her. Her eyes slid closed, and then immediately opened to stare dubiously at him.

“The way I see it, we still have a problem,” she said.

Vader resisted the urge to sigh: it never did anyone any good and always left his lungs aching for hours.

“I can think of several problems, but as you won’t sleep whether I’m in my quarters or attending to my duties, and you won’t accept anything I bring you, clothing or otherwise, I don’t see any immediate solutions.”

She rolled her eyes and resettled on the floor across from him, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear in a gesture that seemed so intimate and familiar that his heart ached.

He needed to run a diagnostic on his life support systems, really.

“I still don’t get why the Emperor's attack dog wants to help _me_. You promised me the power to avenge my people, but there’s nothing in it for you.”

Vader considered: he could not tell her the truth. He could not tell her that her beauty and her fire were heart-stoppingly familiar to him in such a way that he could never deny her. He could not even tell her, again, that her potential in the Force was nearly as vast and unfettered as his own had been, once, when he’d been young and had ambition for himself beyond one more day of life with as minimal pain as possible, because he’d told her that before, often and at length, describing for her the things she could achieve if she would just sit with him and let him _show her_ the Force.

No, instead, he had to find some other shard of honesty, some other piece of himself that he could give her, that she could trust for long enough that he could seduce her by other means.

“You call me a dog,” he said slowly, and she leaned forward. He wondered if she had some unconscious command of the Force, something she’d leaned on in her career as a politician and probable rebel. Some compelling _charm_ that made one want to speak regardless of the wisdom in so doing.

He wondered if he was simply a fool besotted by a pretty face.

His Master would _laugh_ to hear of it.

“If your primary function was to terrify entire systems into obeying the commands of a corrupt, lying master, would you not do the same as me, presented with a similar opportunity?”

She bit her lip, a habit she had that made him wish that when he gave into the urge to touch her that he had flesh and blood hands to do so again. When she did that and ducked her head, as in thought or apology, there was such a strong resemblance to Padme that if someone came to him and told him she was his wife, reborn, remade to be even more perfectly his match, he would not disbelieve them.

“So you want revenge too,” she said and he wanted to dispute that, but the way she said it, eager almost, relieved, perhaps, reminded him of the lies Sidious had told him to trap him, and he snarled where she couldn’t see it.

“Yes.”

She nodded once, firmly, and closed her eyes.

He forced himself to take a deep breath, and began, not where Qui Gonn Jinn had begun with him on a ship that had felt icy and limitless to his desertborn slave self, but where Palpatine had begun.

“You’re angry, still,” he said. “Everything has been taken from you, and you were helpless to stop it.”

Her fury flashed bright in the Force between them, and he reached out for it, cradling the fires gently so she would be able to harness them once he told her what to do.

“That anger is your weapon,” he said. “In anger, in suffering, there is strength. Reach for it, and beyond it. The Force will respond, and it will give you all you need.”

Her initial grasp was clumsy and conflicted, a sharp jab that he was too experienced not to duck, followed immediately by a quiet, directed apology that would do her no good but made him want to reach out and physically catch her hands in his.

“There is no room for apology, here,” he informed her.

She snorted, but then she reached again, and he could feel the second she had connected to the Force, for there was a palpable tension that suddenly surrounded them, and she gasped aloud and straightened her spine.

“There,” he told her.

She reached further, and then she stopped, the room almost throbbing with the fury that had answered her call. “Now what?” she asked.

“It is a tool,” Vader told her. “Now you do whatever you like.”

“Aren’t there rules?” she asked.

Vader considered Sidious, considered his demands for deference, that Vader share his own power, his own small strength, his _everything_ with his master.

He considered the Sith, and all he knew of their power and their lore.

“None that you need concern yourself with at this point,” he said.

_None that I haven’t already implied to you,_ he added, pushing the thought her way and realizing that already, there were the strands of a bond between them.

He knew how to create an appropriate bond the Jedi way, and indeed the parts of them that were already connected seemed to glow with the same ethereal texture that the bond he’d shared with a woman best forgotten had held, but he knew that wasn’t the same as what Sidious had done to him.

He thought it might matter, and was about to seek out the answer in the Force, when she interrupted again.

“If there aren’t rules, then where should I start?”

“I wouldn’t recommend going straight for Tarkin’s heart,” Vader replied dryly, “If that’s what you’re thinking.”

She snorted again, and her frustration with the non-answer stretched between them. Gently, he showed her through their fledgling bond that frustration was as much a tool as anger, and then withdrew slightly.

“Ask a question,” he suggested. “One of the most tangible benefits of the Force is knowledge; perceiving actions seconds ahead in battle to ensure victory, or the deeper repercussions of an action you’re considering. My Master was particularly skilled in anticipating things that might happen decades in the future, though I suspect that particular ability is a rare one.”

“I want to know…” she said softly, almost to herself, and he sensed the direction of her thoughts before a flood of _something_ overwhelmed her and she screamed once and then collapsed forward.

He caught her before she could hit the floor, turning her over in his arms and observing her bloody nose.

It was certainly more successful than either of his first conscious ventures with the Force.

***

When Leia came to, it was with the awareness that the Death Star plans had made it back to Mon Mothma and those who knew what needed to be done with them, and she let herself bask in relief for long moments before she realized that she wasn’t wearing her dress.

She sat up abruptly, noting that she had been tucked neatly into the black synthsilk sheets of Lord Vader’s bed, and that she was wearing a loose-fitting black tunic that was decidedly not hers. Her hair had been taken down, too, brushed out and then braided with a neatness that was almost as shocking as the fact that she hadn’t even woken for it.

She immediately tapped the chrono unit on the bedside and saw that the time spent meditating with Vader plus her time unconscious had amounted to nearly a day lost.

Vader’s pod, which he had explained was a life support chamber that allowed him some freedom of movement outside of his suit, was sealed, which meant he was inside.

She stood up, checked that at least the tunic left her decently covered, and then rapped angrily on the pod.

It opened rather quickly, but then he had probably been waiting on her.

Nearly a day! she thought, suddenly dismayed. Maybe she’d done it wrong? It would be his fault, though, for not giving clearer instructions.

That might not matter to him, though, she realized. He could very well just decide that she wasn’t as strong as he’d kept telling her and send her to be executed after all.

Or, execute her himself. From all she’d heard of Lord Vader, it likely wouldn’t faze him at all to kill someone who had been living with him for a week, no matter how a normal person might feel about it.

“Good,” he said. “You recovered quickly.”

“Oh,” she said, feeling strangely disappointed by that assessment. It was the best possible outcome to the situation, so she shouldn’t, but still.

Then she remembered the state she’d woken in and felt the anger rise up all over again.

“How _dare_ you?” she demanded, shaking her finger at him.

“Your Highness?” he inquired, in the same tone anyone might ask her about a dish at a banquet.

“You undressed me!” she shouted. “You touched me!”

“You were suffering from an overextension of your abilities in the Force,” Vader said. She wanted to resent how calm he sounded as he said it, but a small part of her rationally pointed out that with the life support she now knew about and the vocoder, he had to expend a great deal of effort to sound anything but calm.

“As your… trainer,” he continued, clearly unsure of the word he wanted to use, “it is my duty to care for you while you are incapable of caring for yourself.”

Leia snorted. But, and she could reach out now, much more easily this time, and confirm his feelings on the subject, he seemed sincere.

“So is that what we are?” she asked. “Trainer and trainee? Master and apprentice?”

He flinched at the second appellation, and she felt something inside twist a little, making her relent. “That’s… thank you,” she said. “But if you do anything like that ever again I’ll, well I’ll—“

She cut herself off and turned on her heel to go to the opposite side of the room so she could avoid him, but his hand on her shoulder stopped her.

“Did the Force give you the answer you sought?” he asked, and the quiet intensity she was feeling must have been from _him_ , and what a marvelous advantage it was just to consciously sense others’ emotions!

She considered his question alongside his sincerity, then said, “Yes.”

“Good news?” he asked again, and she felt a ruffle of irritation at his prying, but his grip tightened on her shoulder and she sighed and let the minor annoyance go.

He was trying to train her, actually teaching her something to do with the Force, things she was already able to use against him. He was likely just asking out of academic curiosity.

“Excellent news, in fact,” she said primly. “For myself, Lord Vader, though not for you.”

“Good,” he said, exactly how he’d said it when the chamber had opened. “Now, there is a meal laid out for you in the kitchen, and my duties require me to be elsewhere. Do not try to escape,” he added, as he had every time he’d left her alone since he’d first brought her to his quarters.

“I… I don’t think I will,” she said, and even though it was barely noticeable, she revelled in the way he hesitated at the door.

She’d stay, she thought, for at least as long as it seemed like he was actually teaching her.


End file.
